Not Applicable
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
The transmission of motion video over narrow bandwidth is currently limited to relatively small images, which are transmitted with an insufficient number of frames per second to provide the appearance of smooth motion, even with current image compression techniques. Except for the very wide bandwidth lines the motion video image transmitted with current systems is also relatively limited in resolution. It appears that such wide bandwidth service will not be widely available for years to come, and even then it will remain expensive as supply will not be able to keep up with demand. Fortunately, the speed of operation of computers has greatly increased, and continues to increase at a high rate, a rate greatly exceeding the increase in availability of wide bandwidth.
The present invention seeks to take advantage of the increasing speed of computers to provide the maximum use of bandwidth for transmission of motion video, and to make higher resolution and smoother motion video transmittable with higher frame frequency. Naturally, the wider the bandwidth that is available, the greater the resolution of the frames and the smoother motion simulated by the greater frequency of the frame sequences of the video motion image. The present invention, however, provides for an increase in the resolution of the images of the frames of motion video, and an improvement in video motion, for all transmission media, so that even relatively low speed connections, such as those available with a 56K modem, can provide a transmission with greater resolution and smoother motion video. As with bandwidth, the speed of the computers which transmit and receive the motion video will play a role in the smoothness and size of the motion video images.
Other systems using frame-to-frame processing are known from Hurd et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,982,441, System and Method for Representing a Video Sequence and the references cited therein. The system disclosed in Hurd et al, however, uses a complex mathematical representation of individual frames in terms of a correlation of blocks in successive video frames, rather than the transmission of the difference in a pixel-by-pixel comparison between successive frames.
Other than for image and file compression techniques, there is no prior art that the present invention builds upon except the literature of the subject generally, most of which is cited in Hurd et al.
The present invention has elements that are covered generally by class U.S. Class 348/417 and International Class H04N 7/28.
The present invention is system of computers and computer software to maximize the use of the available bandwidth to transmit motion video by transmitting only that part of a frame of a motion video image that has changed from the previous frame in a motion video frame sequence in order to increase resolution and frame frequency of the motion video image.
The process of frame-to-frame comparison and transmission commences with the first frame in the sequence of a motion video image, which may be transmitted in its entirety. Subsequent frames in the sequence are not transmitted in their entirety, but only the difference in the pixels between each of two frames which are adjacent in the sequence, the comparison data, is transmitted. The latter of the two frames is reconstructed by the receiver from the comparison data and the prior of the two frames, pixel by pixel.
The process may be made subject to certain thresholds with respect to the quantity of data being transmitted, such as the amount of comparison data.
The process may also be enhanced by reducing the amount of comparison data transmitted by compression of the comparison data with standard data compression techniques. The amount of comparison data to be transmitted may also be reduced by transmitting the frames of a sequence of a motion video image in grey-scale, which may then be colorized by the receiver according to a scheme related to the pallette of the first frame.
The system may be utilized in all types of transmitter and receiver combinations, including telephonically or network connected computers and wireless communication devices. The method of image processing and transmission included in the present invention is carried out by computers cooperating with such transmitting and receiving means so as to be controlled by computer programs which effect the scheme of the method, and constitute the apparatus by which the method is carried out.